“Damariscotta History” columnists Calvin and Marjorie Dodge pose with an award for outstanding community service in their Damariscotta home June 15, 2018. Marjorie Dodge passed away early Monday, April 27. (Jessica Picard photo, LCN file)
New construction and improvements are well underway in our beautiful town of Damariscotta. A new drainage system is underway on Bristol Road and granite curbing is being installed for our new sidewalks, which will greatly improve the safety of people who walk along Bristol Road. There has been a real need for the last 15 years for a good sidewalk on Bristol Road.
This week we received great news that the town of Damariscotta won a $3 million grant for our waterfront project. This parking lot area has needed a new drainage system, as well as a much-needed raise in the height of the parking lot surface to protect against high tides and sea level rise in the years ahead. It also has to be resurfaced completely. This project will help the stores and shop owners whose basements have flooded over the past years when we have extra-high tides.
This week the town of Damariscotta made headlines on Channel 6, on the 6 o’clock evening news. Channel 6 told the story of how Damariscotta residents and the Main Street Grocery store teamed up and now offer help to take grocery orders and deliver these orders to local people who need them. This once again shows how caring the local people in this area are. We have many local organizations and church groups all willing to help in this time of the coronavirus.
We must all be thankful that so far we only have 12 cases of the coronavirus here in Lincoln County, but only time will tell when we start to have an influx of people coming to our area this summer and all the summer cottages start to fill up and reopen.
This past week, as I had to go to the bank, post office, and local grocery store, we saw everyone trying to do their part by wearing face masks and keeping their safe distance.
It is heartwarming to see the local people in our area all united and doing their part in the fight against the coronavirus.
The second part of this column I have to complete myself. Marjorie passed away in the early morning hours of April 27. She always corrected my handwriting and made sure I dotted my i’s and crossed my t’s. We always joked about this and she always enjoyed sharing all her photos and postcards and history of Damariscotta. I will miss her looking over my shoulder and adding a few words to our weekly column.
She always loved to cut out articles of local history about the Twin Villages and the many people she knew and grew up with; many of them were her father and mother’s friends. She loved to tell stories of her life and all the stories of when she was a young girl living down at Round Top Farms, where her father, Winfield Cooper, was head herdsman for 43 years. She would have been out of high school at Lincoln Academy 70 years this June.
She often talked about the Damariscotta village and how it had changed but still had so many caring people in it. They often called her and talked over history and many came to look at all the photos and postcards she had collected over the years. They also came to see many of the Round Top Dairy items she had collected and saved and the albums she had put together about Round Top Farms.
I have been retired 30 years the first of May and I was blessed to have spent those 30 years with Marjorie and to have been able to talk over so many things. We were blessed to see the grandchildren grow up and marry and have their new homes and our great-grandchildren. She so often said, “What more could you ask for?”
She would want to end this article by saying, may the Good Lord bless and keep you all from this coronavirus.
